How to Become a Great Finisher

The road to failure is paved with good intentions. Take a good look at your colleagues and you’ll find lots of Good Starters – they begin each new pursuit with enthusiasm, or at the very least, a commitment to getting the job done.

And then something happens. Somewhere along the way, they lose steam and the project falls off track.

Does all this sound familiar? Maybe a little too familiar? If you’re guilty of being a Good Starter, but a lousy finisher you have a very common problem.

Being a Great Finisher is about staying motivated from a project’s beginning to its end. Recent research has uncovered the reasons why doing so can be difficult, and a simple and effective strategy you can use to keep your motivation high.

In their recent studies, University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach examined how people pursuing goals were affected by focusing on either how far they had already come (to-date thinking) or what was left to accomplish (to-go thinking). People routinely use both kinds of thinking to motivate themselves. But too much to-date thinking can actually undermine your motivation to finish a project.

Koo and Fishbach’s studies show that when we consider how far we’ve already come while pursuing a goal, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment and tend to slow down. When we focus on what we’ve already done, we’re more likely to try to achieve a sense of “balance” by making progress on other important goals.

If, instead, we focus on how far we have left to go (to-go thinking), our motivation is not only sustained, it’s heightened. Fundamentally, this has to do with the way our brains are wired. To-go thinking helps us tune in to the discrepancy between where we are now and where we want to be. And the brain reacts to such discrepancies by throwing resources at the problem.

Great Finishers force themselves to stay focused on the goal – they never congratulate themselves on a job half-done. Great managers create Great Finishers by reminding their employees to keep their eyes on the prize, and are careful to avoid giving effusive praise or rewards for reaching milestones “along the way.” Encouragement is important, but to keep your team motivated, save the accolades for a job well – and completely – done.

(Heidi Grant Halvorson is a motivational psychologist and the author of “Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals.” She also blogs about motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, “The Science of Success,” can be found at heidigranthalvorson.com.)

© 2011 Harvard Business Publishing